Envious Casca Read online

  This brutal truth made Joseph wince. He said: ‘Stephen, Stephen!’ in an imploring voice.

  ‘I think,’ said Maud, getting up, ‘that I shall go and sit in the drawing-room with my book.’

  Joseph glanced at her with humorous affection. ‘Yes, my dear, do that!’ he said. ‘Try to put it all out of your mind! How I wish that I could do the same! But I am afraid the Inspector will want to see you.’

  ‘Oh yes!’ she said, uninterested.

  ‘There is nothing to be afraid of, you know. He is quite human.’

  ‘I am not afraid, thank you, Joseph,’ she replied placidly.

  Paula barely waited until she had left the room before

  ejaculating: ‘If I’ve got to listen to extracts from that ghastly book on top of everything else, I think my nerve will crack!’

  ‘Keep calm, sister: Aunt has lost the book.’

  ‘Stephen!’ exclaimed Joseph. ‘No, that’s too bad of you! If you’ve hidden it, you must give it back to her at once.’

  ‘I haven’t touched it,’ said Stephen curtly.

  Neither Mathilda nor Paula believed this, but as Joseph showed signs of pressing the point, they intervened to prevent an explosion. Mathilda said that no doubt it would turn up; and Paula wondered how Roydon was getting on with the Inspector.

  He was not, as a matter of fact, getting on very well. Policemen represented to him, quite irrationally, his personal enemies. He did not like them; they made him nervous, in much the same way that butlers did, so that he felt that his clothes were shabby and his hands too large. To conceal this discomfort, he assumed a grand manner, and was inclined to overact his unconcern. He said: ‘Ah, Inspector, you want a word with me, don’t you? I’m quite ready to tell you anything I know, of course, but I’m afraid that won’t be much. I’m only down for the week-end, as I daresay you’ve heard. In fact, I hardly knew Mr Herriard.’

  He ended on his nervous laugh. He hadn’t meant to say all that; he knew it must have sounded artificial, but somehow he was unable to stop himself. To occupy his hands, he lit a cigarette, and began to smoke it, rather too fast. He wished the Inspector would stop staring at him so unblinkingly. As though he were a wild beast in a show! he thought resentfully.

  The Inspector asked him for his name and address, and

  slowly wrote these down in his notebook. ‘Were you acquainted with the deceased previous to your arrival here?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Well, naturally I knew of him, but I hadn’t actually met him. I came down with Miss Herriard. She invited me.’

  ‘I understand you are occupying the bedroom next to the deceased’s?’

  ‘Oh well, yes, in a way I suppose I am!’ conceded Roydon. ‘Only there’s a bathroom in between, so naturally I didn’t hear anything, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘When you left the drawing-room after tea, did you go straight upstairs to your room?’

  ‘Yes. At least, no! Now I come to think of it, Miss Clare and I went into the library. As far as I remember, Miss Herriard joined us there. It was after that that I went up to change. I’ve no idea where Mr Herriard was by that time. I never saw him again after I left the drawing-room.’

  The Inspector thanked him, and requested him to ask Miss Herriard to come to him.

  Paula was not afraid of policemen. She answered the Inspector’s questions impatiently; and when he asked her if she had had any quarrel with Nathaniel, said that no one could possibly live for half a day with Nathaniel without quarrelling with him. But when the Inspector wanted to know why she had quarrelled with her uncle, she replied haughtily that it was none of his business.

  This did nothing to prejudice him in her favour, and since under his remorseless probing she very soon lost her temper it was not long before he had learnt that she had wanted Nathaniel to give her money for some undivulged purpose, and that he had refused.

  ‘But if you think that that’s got anything to do with the murder you’re a fool!’ Paula said. ‘I shouldn’t have told you, only that the whole house knows it, so that you were bound to find it out sooner or later. Do you want to know anything else?’

  ‘Yes, miss, I want to know what you did when you left the drawing-room after tea.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know!’ she said. ‘Do you think I keep a record of my movements?’

  ‘Did you go straight upstairs?’

  She condescended to give the matter a little thought. ‘No; I went into the library. I went upstairs later, with Mr Roydon.’

  ‘Did you go to your own room?’

  ‘Of course! Where else should I go?’

  ‘And you did not come out of it again until you joined the rest of the party downstairs?’

  ‘No,’ she replied briefly.

  He let her go, and sent for Edgar Mottisfont. If she had been belligerent, and Roydon patronising, Mottisfont provided a contrast to them both by using an ingratiating manner. That he was nervous was plain to be seen, but they were all nervous, the Inspector thought, and no wonder. Mottisfont seemed more shocked than any of them, reiterating his horror, and his incomprehension. He had been intimately acquainted with Nathaniel for close on thirty years; for many years he had spent Christmas with Nathaniel. Nothing like this, he said, unconscious of absurdity, had ever happened before.

  ‘I understand there had been some unpleasantness,’ the Inspector said.

  ‘He was a hard man. Out of touch with the younger generation, you know. It was Miss Herriard’s fault for bringing Roydon here. She should have known better! However, that’s not my affair. I’ve never pretended to understand that couple. Seemed to take a delight in annoying their uncle! I don’t know why Herriard put up with them, but there’s no doubt he was fond of them, in his way.’

  ‘May I ask, sir, if Miss Herriard had any particular reason for bringing Mr Roydon here?’

  Mottisfont seemed to feel that he had said too much. He replied evasively: ‘You’d better ask her. It had nothing to do with me.’

  ‘There was no quarrel between yourself and Mr Herriard?’

  As he put the question, the Inspector knew that there had been a quarrel. It was as though a curtain was drawn swiftly over Mottisfont’s face, shutting him in. He had been a little off his guard, talking querulously about the young Herriards, but now he was wary again, trying to make up his mind, the Inspector guessed, what he should say. Probably he didn’t know who might have overheard his quarrel; didn’t dare lie; didn’t want to tell the truth. All the same, these nervous witnesses! The Inspector waited, keeping his gaze steady on Mottisfont’s face.

  The weak grey eyes behind Mottisfont’s spectacles shifted. ‘Not a quarrel. Oh, dear me, no! Nothing of that sort! Why, we’ve been in partnership for twenty-five years! What an idea! We merely disagreed about a matter purely concerned with the business. Herriard was more or less of a sleeping-partner, you know, but very fond of interfering with the actual running of the business, if you gave him the chance. A little old-fashioned: didn’t move with the times. Many’s the battle-royal we’ve waged! But I think I may claim to have been able to handle him!’

  Considering him: weak eyes, harassed brow, peevish mouth; and remembering Nathaniel’s dominant personality, the Inspector disbelieved him, but he did not press the matter. He thought the whole pack of them were lying, one way or another, some to shield others, some from fear. No sense in getting oneself bogged in a swamp of misstatements until he’d heard what the experts, busy in Nathaniel’s room upstairs, had gleaned. He seemed, therefore, to accept Mottisfont’s statements, and asked the inevitable question: ‘When you left the drawing-room, where did you go?’

  He’d known what the answer would be, of course. Mottisfont had gone up to his room, to change for dinner, and had not come out of it again until he had joined the rest of the party in the drawing-room.

  The Inspector dismissed him, suppressing a sigh. Alibis were the bane of a detective’s life, but he felt he would have welcomed one now. Gave one something to catch hold of,